This welcome volume is yet another in the important series The Ancient
Commentators on Aristotle. Edited by Richard Sorabji, about 30 volumes
have now been published (they are not numbered). As in all the volumes,
Sorabji's General Introduction is reprinted as an Appendix, (pp. 151-60),
though its accompanying lists both of the Commentaria in Aristotelem
Graeca, in the Berlin edition of Hermann Diels, and of English
translations of the ancient commentators are found only in the first of
the translations: Philoponus, Against Aristotle on the Eternity
of the World (1987). Uniformly with the series, there are, as
well as the translation (here in 110 pages), a short introduction (here
in two parts: one by Peter Lautner, who did the notes, and the other by
J.O. Urmson, who translated the text), a list of textual emendations,
extensive
notes (305, in fact, compensating for the shortness of the introduction),
an English-Greek glossary, a Greek-English index, and indices of names
and of subjects.

Other compensations for the regrettable shortness of the introduction
are the affiliated publications from the Cornell University Press: Sorabji's
Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983), his Matter,
Space and Motion (1988), and the collections of articles Sorabji
has edited: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science
(1987), Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their
Influence (1990). These are indispensable for negotiating Lautner's
notes. Also useful on the Aristotelian tradition, and the place of Simplicius
in it, is a new collection of articles edited by Sorabji but published
by the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London in 1997:
Aristotle and After.

Understanding the character and significance of what Simplicius is doing
here, especially of his very consequential modifications of Aristotle,
requires consultation with excellent, but inconvenient, endnotes and with
their references to this and other, less accessible, literature. As a result,
In Physics 5 and its mates are volumes for well formed
scholars with first class university libraries at their disposal.

With this volume, we near the completion within this series of the
translation
of Simplicius' enormous commentary on the Physics. It
joins, of Simplicius, the Corollaries On Place and Time,
On Aristotle On the Soul 1.1-2.4, and On Aristotle's
Physics 2, 4, 6, 7; all of which have appeared since 1989. They
manifest
in the English speaking world a renewed scholarly and philosophical interest
in Simplicius which has produced translations, editions, and research by
American, Belgian, English, French, German, and Italian scholars. Their
work and projects were collected in Simplicius: sa vie, son oeuvre,
sa survie, (1987), edited by Ilsetraut Hadot.1
Indeed, a contributor
to that collection, Leonardo Tarán, promises us a new edition of
the Greek
text of the commentary on the Physics as well as another translation of
it. Another contributor, Philippe Hoffmann, is reediting the commentary
on the De Caelo.

The renewed labor on the commentaries is given justification by those
who undertake it. The first place to find this is in Sorabji's General
Introduction which, beyond indicating the influence of the Neoplatonic
commentaries, calls them "incomparable guides to Aristotle" (p.
159). A claim he supports by reference to the "minutely detailed
knowledge
of the entire Aristotelian corpus" possessed and conveyed by the
commentators.2

In his article for the French colloque, Tara/n maintained that Simplicius'
on the Physics remains the best commentary on that work "even
today"
(p. 247). Since her Le Problème du Néoplatonisme
Alexandrin:
Hiérocl&grave;s et Simplicius (1978),3
Ilsetraut Hadot has defended
Simplicius and the commentators of the Athenian Neoplatonic school from
denigrating comparison with the production of the Alexandrines. She
demonstrates
that Praechter was wrong in supposing the Alexandrian commentaries to have
been more devoted to the "vrai sens" of Aristotle in contrast
to their own Neoplatonic philosophical projects. In fact, the commentaries
of both schools were produced within a tradition initiated by Porphyry
and were required by the essential role Aristotle's writings played in
teaching. The value of the commentary may be diminished by the service
given to such Neoplatonic scholastic projects as the reconciliation of
Plato and Aristotle, but Hadot's demonstrations elevate Simplicius by
diminishing
the preeminence given to Alexandrines. In a review in this journal (BMCR
97.9.24), Richard Todd produced good reasons for choosing, as the place
to begin among the older scholarship on Aristotle, the Renaissance
commentaries
of Jacobus Zabarella or Julius Pacius, but still he would have these
Renaissance
humanists bring readers back to Simplicius. By the Renaissance, his
commentaries
lost to the Latins until the 13th century were well known and highly
respected.

So none will deny the enormous importance of Simplicius' commentary.
Beyond its illumination of Aristotle, its application and defense of the
Neoplatonic interpretative framework is skillful and creative. Moreover,
it is the great treasury for our knowledge of previous Greek physics from
the Pre-Socratics onward and of the commentaries before his own. Both of
these he preserves by quotation, often at greater length than his
argument
requires, as if Simplicius, like Boethius, saw himself preserving a
disappearing
heritage in a darkening age. Much of In Physics 5, is
a dialogue with Alexander of Aphrodisias, and enormous passages of his
commentary are reproduced. They remind us of one of the essential tasks
of scholarship that has only begun, which will be assisted by this
translation.
Since so much of what we know about the natural philosophy before
Simplicius
is dependent on him, we need to deepen our understanding of his thinking
in order to consider how his selection and reproduction shape our
knowledge
of ancient philosophy.

The conservative labor was successful; evidently the commentary of
Simplicius
survived and carried his past with it. In consequence, another reason
for
the great importance of this work is its influence. His understanding of
Aristotle constituted an essential element in the thinking of the Arabic
Neoplatonists and, from the 13th century on, his comments were
communicated
to the Latin west in their treatises and in their own commentaries on
Aristotle's
texts, as well as through direct translations from the Greek by Latins
like William of Moerbeke. Thus he reached the scholastics of the
medieval
west.4 The conscientious continuation by
Simplicius of the great Neoplatonic
enterprise of reconciling Plato and Aristotle helped determine the Latin
understanding of Aristotle. Moreover, ideas of his own, developed in
that
context, became fruitful again as the Aristotelian physics was
transformed
in the construction of modern natural philosophies.5

Simplicius was with Damascius and the other pagan philosophers who
headed
east after Justinian closed the Academy in Athens. He probably composed
this, and his other Aristotelian commentaries, in the remote city of
Harrân
(Carrhae). Whatever the activity of the philosophers gathered there, as
distinct from his predecessors like Themistius, or contemporaries like
Philoponus the Christian, Simplicius' commentaries no longer show
characteristics
which mark them as having been developed as lectures. Evidence points to
composition after 538, and Peter Lautner shows that at least part of the
commentary on the Physics was written before the commentary
on the Categories.6

Simplicius assiduously carries forward the reconciliation of Aristotle
with Plato. Whether, with Sorabji, we will call this project "perfectly
crazy" (p. 156), we will agree it stimulates Simplicius to his greatest
creativity. Here the philosophic commentator is moved by his religion.
Since Porphyry, and fervently with Iamblichus, Proclus, and their successors,
piety in respect to the old gods demanded that the unity of that by which
they revealed themselves and their cosmos be exhibited. Further, defending
the Hellenic spiritual tradition against its critics and effectively
marshaling
its forces against the Christian enemy required this unification. Like
the philosophical Christians and the Jews, those who held fast to Hellenic
religion had also to show that what was revealed to the ancients, barbarian
and Greek, could be harmonized with philosophy. The Platonic tradition
which effected this must itself be made consistent.7 Within book five
of the Physics, concerned as it is with the relation
of METABOLH/, here translated as transformation, and KI/NHSIS, here translated
as change or motion, the greatest problem for Simplicius' pious reconciling
work is that Aristotle subordinates KI/NHSIS to METABOLH/ as species to
genus.

In the Laws, Plato does the opposite, making transformation a species
of change. Simplicius proposes that the difference is "merely verbal"
(p.29: 821,22; p.30: 822,29). In fact, the reconciliation requires that
change be elevated into intellect where Aristotle refuses to allow it.
There KI/NHSIS becomes Neoplatonic spiritual PRO/ODOS (p.29: 821,26; p.32:
824,14ff.). So "intellect changes by a change that is without
transformation
and timeless" (p.31: 824,2-3). This is the motionless motion, the
character and place of which in Proclus Stephen Gersh described. Subsequently,
Gersh gave us some indications of its later history.8 This "different
kind of motion", the "act of the perfect", Aquinas learns
about from the Arab Neoplatonists. Thomas employs it when he follows Averroes
in a reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle enabling him to work out how
intellectual life can be ascribed to God. Aristotle's intellectual activity,
which, in De Anima III,7 (431a6) is different from
motion, has become a different kind of motion, the comparative
genitive
is now partitive.9 Hans-Georg Gadamer has
indicated how intellect understood
in this Neoplatonic way enables the unification simultaneously of being
and becoming and of intellect and being, so "Plotinus' concept of
the soul ... has completely transformed the concept of being into the concept
of a self-related power, a dynamis which thinks itself. With this he has
for the first time given priority to reflection in the field of ontological
questions. He stands at the threshold of a new age."10

Yet this is not all that those attentive to how the Neoplatonists were
"doing philosophy ... by writing commentaries" (Sorabji,
p.151)
will discover of importance in this volume. There are also a distinction
between active and passive transformations (note 9 and p.30: 822,18-22),
a defence of infinite regress so as to avoid the Christian notion of a
temporal beginning of the cosmos (note 11 and pp.50-1: 846,3ff.), an
assimilation
of Aristotle's prime matter to extension, reconsiderations of the relation
of quality and quantity (p.66: 864,15ff.) and of the mathematical as
abstraction
(p.80: 880,1ff.). Simplicius is one of those who build the world on the
other side of the Plotinian threshold.

Simplicius helps work through completely what the Neoplatonic
reconciliations
and unifications require. He assists with its momentous move from substance
to subjectivity. For what it furthers and transmits in this greatest of
western transformations his commentary is philosophically important. Those
who have made it more accessible are to be thanked.

6. See R. Sorabji and I. Hadot in Sorabji ed.,
Aristotle Transformed.
The Ancient Commentators and their influence, (Ithaca, New York:
Cornell University Press, 1990), 18 and 278ff. and Lautner's introduction
to the In Physics 5, 4.